Fwd: More on Denver sales

[thewho rocks <leb905@xxxxxxxxx>]

Repost from O&S.  Here's an interesting article that shows the other
side of the Internet sales game:


> >From today's Rocky Mountain News
> http://shorterlink.com/?105VNG
> 
> Brown: Too many locked out of online ticket game
> 
> June 22, 2002
> 
> Barry Fey was thrilled. It was the public on-sale of
> The Who's Sept. 19 date at Fiddler's Green. Within
>  minutes, thousands of tickets were being snapped
> up by fans.
> 
> Then he sat there as the numbers dwindled. Fans
> buying tickets online pulled up seats, then released
> the tickets without buying them. Instead of selling
> thousands that morning, House of Blues concerts
> sold hundreds.
> 
> The holds were so extensive that, at one point, there were no
> reserved seats left at all, Fey says, when actually thousands of
> reserved seats were left unsold.
> 
> We've written about this before. Buying tickets online is a whole
> different experience than lining up or calling on the phone. You
> can open as many browsers as you like and pull up different sets
> of tickets in each price range - then decide which set you want to
> buy, or buy none at all. A single fan online could theoretically tie
> up dozens of tickets before choosing his seats. And as we've also
> noted in the past as well, sometimes the first pair you pull up
> aren't as good as what you can get if you wait a few minutes.
> 
> For the computer-savvy fan, great seats can still be scored. For
> the people who buy tickets only a couple of times a year, it can be
> a confusing game where you end up settling for seats that aren't
> the best available.
> 
> Fey says he thinks that the system actually hurt his sales this
> time. Who tickets are expensive, ranging up to $158. Some fans
> may have not liked the seats they pulled up at that price and
> decided not to buy, when better seats were actually available,
> Fey says. At one point in the on-sale, it showed that only tickets
> dozens of rows from the stage were available. Moments later,
> seventh-row tickets popped up.
> 
> At press time, the 17,000-seat amphitheater had sold about
> 3,700 tickets for the show. So plenty of good seats are still
> available.
> 
> "We're going to have to start a new marketing campaign," Fey
> grouses.
> 
> Anyone who bought a lawn seat because Ticketmaster showed no
> reserved seats left will be allowed to return their ticket and buy
> the more-expensive reserved seats, if they choose, Fey says.
> 
> Internet presales have become all the rage, but Fey is considering
> a return to the old days - having the presales be everywhere but
> the Internet.
> 
> "If you can do Internet presales, why can't you do non-Internet
> presales?" he says. "I don't think someone on the Internet should
> be able to hold a ticket for five minutes when someone on the
> phone can't and someone at the box office certainly can't. That's
> not fair. I don't see why these people should be afforded an
> opportunity that someone calling on the phone doesn't have or
> someone going to the window doesn't have. It's not something
> that's supposed to hurt other people."
> ==================
> 
> Charles
> 
>  


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